Mr. McClung has asked us to write a blog post about Jim Crow Laws and the Supreme Court Cases. I have chosen to pick the case of Plessy VS. Ferguson also known as ” seprate but equal “. The case of Plessy VS. Ferguson was after the American Civil War during the Reconstruction period.  This whole case started with the time that a man by the name of Homer Plessy who boarded a with only train car. Plessy was one-eighth part black and seven-eighths white and was born a free man, but in Louisiana, was still considered black. He was jailed for resisting to go to the colored car. This became the case of Homer Plessy vs. The State of Louisiana. Plessy argued that the state denied him his rights of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. The judge of the case was a man by the man of John Howard Ferguson, and he ruled that Louisiana had the right to regulate railroad companies, as long as they companies were in the State of Louisiana’s boundaries. The Committee of Citizens took Plessy’s appeal to the Supreme Court of Louisiana and again, found an unreceptive ear. They then went to the Supreme Court and had an oral arguement on April 13, 1896. Tourgée and Phillips appeared for the behalf of Homer Plessy in the courtroom to ague. Later, this would become one of the greatest and most famous decisions in American History. In a seven to one decision (Justice David Josiah Brewer did not participate,) the Court rejected Plessy’s arguments based on the Fourteenth Amendment, seeing no way in which the Louisiana statute violated it. The Court rejected to view the Louisiana law implied and inferiority of blacks, in violation of the 14th Amendment. I believe that the acts of the people on the train, the judges, and other legal officials were bieng dumb and should have just been fair in the case and thoughts that followed it.

Tanner N.